Justified by Faith

Tom Shrader expounds Galatians 2:15-21, explaining that Paul's confrontation of Peter at Antioch sets the stage for the letter's central argument: no person is justified before God by works of the law, but only through faith in Christ. Shrader contrasts biblical Christianity with all religion-based approaches to salvation, emphasizing that human effort — whether Jewish law-keeping, Catholic ritual, or moral striving — cannot produce righteousness before a holy God. He closes by drawing on Galatians 2:20 to remind both seekers and believers that the same Christ who justifies also sustains daily life, because the life now lived is Christ living within the believer.

“When Jesus said 'It is finished,' what He meant was, all that needs to be done for the salvation of His people through all time has been accomplished on the cross.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Galatians: Fighting for Grace

Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 47 min

Themes: faith, salvation, grace, righteousness, works, law, justification, identity in christ, new believer, struggling with worthiness, seeking salvation, raised in religion, doubting faith, performance-driven believer, religious background, spiritual seeker

Scripture: Galatians 2:3, Galatians 2:11, Galatians 2:14, Galatians 2:15-21, Galatians 2:16, Galatians 2:20, Philippians 3:4-12, Job 25:4, Romans 3:10-21, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 10:17-18, Ephesians 1:3-13, Acts 16:31

Theological Themes: justification by faith, sola fide, imputed righteousness, works of the law, soteriology, union with christ, pauline theology, grace alone

Full Transcript

Context and Background

Open your Bibles to the book of Galatians, chapter 2, verses 15 through 21. This morning at 6:47, I took all of the notes I had and threw them away and started over, only because I'm trying to get my arms around this passage. Tim and I talked about this because the last three weeks — this week and the next two — cover very much the same theme. I don't want to run away from that and feel compelled to come up with something new. Obviously Paul has a point in this repetition.

What I want to do today is look at these verses and make sure we understand the context, but I want to spend the bulk of the time on verses 16 and probably verse 20. I'd love to take a little extra time as I read through and make some comments along the way, knowing I'm not necessarily going to return to every one of these verses. The important thing is that we keep this in context.

Paul is writing this letter to what he describes in verse 2 as the churches, plural, in Galatia — a region in Asia. He's writing to churches he visited, planted, and then moved on from. He has received word that coming in behind him is a group of men called the Judaizers. These are Jews who are saying to these Gentiles — and remember what has happened up to this point — the gospel had been Jews preaching to Jews. As the message goes out to the Gentiles, an issue arises: do Gentiles, as they become Christians, need to first become Jews? Do they need to adhere to the ceremonial law and the laws of Judaism?

Paul's answer is definitely not. The Judaizers, however, attack both Paul's authenticity as an apostle and his message. They are saying, listen, Paul preaches salvation by grace through faith, and that's not the gospel — or at best it's only part of it. Paul, understanding that this is a huge issue, recognizes the gospel itself is at stake.

The Gospel Is Worth Defending

We talk amongst ourselves all the time about where to draw lines — which issues are worth going to the mat for. Some issues are purely matters of preference. Some are even biblical issues that we don't necessarily feel rise to the point of a major battle. But when it comes to the gospel, that is the very heart of the Christian faith, and we have no choice but to address it when the gospel is attacked. We must stand up and say, this is the gospel — this is the center of the Christian faith.

Paul tells us in chapter 2 that after fourteen years he went back to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus and submitted to Peter, James, and John the gospel that he preached — the gospel of salvation by grace through faith. He took with him Barnabas and Titus, and Titus was an uncircumcised Greek. Paul gives us this information in chapter 2, verse 3: at the end of that time, the pillars of the church decided that to circumcise Titus would be to cave into the Judaizers, to give some support to their message. And so they said no — the gospel is salvation by grace through faith, and nothing is added to it.

From Jerusalem to Antioch

That is the battle and the discussion. We saw last week that the scene shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch. At Antioch, Peter had come and, when he was among the Gentiles, he ate with them, celebrated with them, and went to church with them. Then the Judaizers came in, and Peter caved. Paul confronts him in chapter 2, verse 11 — he opposed him to his face. Why? Verse 14: the truth of the gospel is at stake. He opposed him in the presence of all, because this had taken place in front of everyone.

This is where we left off. Paul says, "If you, being a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" He is saying, you came with this great sense of freedom, you came understanding the gospel, you ate with the Gentiles — and then when the Judaizers came, when the opposition came, you caved in. You ran away and created a breach in fellowship.

The one you really scratch your head about is Barnabas, mentioned in verse 13. This is the same Barnabas who had been with Paul on all of these occasions, who had seen the miracles, signs, and wonders in Paul's ministry, and who had been a huge supporter of Paul from the very beginning. And yet — we spent some time on this last week — Barnabas, I assume for the same reason as Peter, because of the fear of man, pulled away. So Paul confronts him.

Continuing the Passage

What follows now is the continuation of that confrontation. My assumption is that when the churches in Galatia received this letter, they sat down and read it straight through. We are spending thirteen or fourteen weeks on it, so we are making breaks and stopping points that they would not necessarily have made. These sections sometimes divide easily, but this is a section that continues. I want to carry that thought forward and come back to what is, to me, the big idea of this passage.

The "We" of Verse 15

As we read through this passage, some observations are worth making along the way. It begins with the first word of verse 15, where Paul uses the plural personal pronoun "we" four times in verses 15, 16, and 17. "We are Jews" — he means himself, Peter, and all those who by birth were Jews. He says, "We who by nature are Jews, not sinners from among the Gentiles." In other words, we are not Gentile sinners; we are Jewish sinners.

A Verse Worth Keeping

Verse 16 is enormously important — one of those verses worth keeping a list of, whether in the front of your Bible, on your phone, or on a tablet, that you return to again and again. "Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law, but is justified through faith in Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus so that we may be justified by faith in Christ, not by works of law. Since by the works of law, no flesh will be justified."

This is the first time Paul uses the word "justified" in this book, and it becomes a key word and central idea. The question it answers is: what must I do to be declared righteous before God? The answer is clear — to be in right standing before God requires faith in Christ, not any human effort. We will come back to this.

Christ Is Not a Minister of Sin

Verse 17 is an unusual verse. "But if while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners" — Paul is saying, if faith in Christ does not save me, if I am not justified in that, then we have a very serious problem: then Christ is a minister of sin. In his paraphrase, Eugene Peterson puts it this way: Christ is an accessory to sin.

This is the logic Paul is pressing. Jesus said that to be saved, delivered, and justified, we must believe in Him. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." If salvation is by works, or has a works component to it, then even Jesus becomes a minister of sin. Paul's answer is emphatic: may that never be.

Rebuilding What Was Destroyed

Paul then shifts the personal pronoun from plural to singular. "For if I rebuild what I once destroyed, I proved myself to be a transgressor." If he goes back into this form of Judaism — if, having understood salvation by grace through faith, he returns and begins to add works to it — he becomes a transgressor. That addition can take many shapes and sizes, as we will discuss in a moment.

"For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God." As he noted back in verse 16, all the law does is condemn the flesh, not justify it. Verse 20 then follows: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

That final phrase — "who loved me and gave Himself for me" — is the motivation behind everything God does. His love is demonstrative, shown in the giving of Himself. Verse 21 concludes: "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly."

Paul's Pedigree in Philippians

That is a quick overview of the passage. In verses 15 through 20, Paul is presenting this conflict and making clear that he understood the law thoroughly. As it relates to Judaism, he was supreme in that effort. Keep your finger in Galatians and turn two books to the right, to Philippians, where Paul speaks of his pedigree in terms of salvation by flesh — that is, by human effort, by what he does.

Philippians chapter 3, verse 4: "If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more." He then lists his heritage: "Circumcised on the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless." Working from the end back to the beginning, he is saying: as it relates to the law, he was blameless. In terms of righteousness found in the law, he followed it all. In terms of the Christian movement as it began to gain ground, he did not merely condemn it — he persecuted it. In his understanding of what God taught in the Old Testament, he did not merely study it — he was a Pharisee, and supreme among them.

Counting It All Loss

Yet Paul says all of that was human effort. "Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ." And the supreme value, in verse 8, is "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" — not merely understanding facts about Him, but knowing Him in a personal way, having a personal relationship with Him.

Verse 10: "That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings." He goes on in verse 12 to say he has not already obtained all this, he is not yet perfect, but he does not regard himself as having laid hold of it. Instead: "One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." All of those former accomplishments — all of that religious pedigree — are as filthy rags by comparison. The King James renders it plainly: they are dung, as compared to knowing Christ.

even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues, they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

That is a blanket indictment against all of humanity. There are no exceptions. Paul is saying every single human being stands condemned before a holy God. And that is the problem we all share.

The Universal Problem of Sin

So the question Bildad asked in Job 25:4 — "How then can a man be just with God?" — is the most important question any person will ever face. How can a sinful man appease a holy God? Throughout history, there have been essentially two answers to that question. Either through man's effort, or through grace by faith. Those are the only two options. Those are the only two possibilities.

When we talk about religion, we are really talking about two big buckets. In one bucket is biblical Christianity. In the other bucket is everything else. Every other religion, without exception, has a component of human effort. You do something. You don't do something. You earn your way. You work your way toward God.

Paul has been addressing this in the context of Judaism, but the same principle applies to any system of religion. So rather than staying in that Jewish context, it is worth bringing this closer to home. Most people in the room are not from a Jewish background, but many come from a Catholic background, or Methodist, or Lutheran, or Episcopalian, or Mormon. Though these traditions are nuanced and different from one another, the conflict is the same. On one side, you have salvation by grace through faith. On the other side, you have everything else.

Religion Is Not the Same as the Gospel

What Paul is saying — and this applies directly — is that your Catholicism is not saving you. Your Mormonism is not saving you. Your Methodism is not saving you. Whatever those things are, they are not redeeming you. And more than that, they are likely getting in the way.

A couple of years ago, around Easter or Christmas, during a message, the point was raised: why come only on Easter and Christmas? It was not that anyone is unwelcome. The concern is that walking away from those services, a person might say to themselves, "I go on Easter and Christmas," and that becomes a substitute for genuine faith. It gives a false sense of having done something.

That is exactly what Paul is saying about his Judaism, and we can say the same thing about Catholicism or any of these other systems. None of those things get a person right with God. Strict adherence to them can actually get in the way, because it feeds the flesh. It feeds the idea that I am doing something to earn my standing before God.

Same Language, Different Dictionary

Now, many of these other systems will include Jesus. They will say Jesus died for my sins. But when you press further into what that means, you will find one of two things. Either they are using the same language with a different dictionary — the same words meaning something entirely different — or they mean that Jesus died for my sins and I also need to do something.

When a family member died, people spent money on masses for his benefit, hoping to either save his soul or move it from purgatory into heaven. But when a person dies, they are either in heaven or hell. That is the end of it. No candles burned and no masses said will change that. The die is cast.

What that practice reveals, at a deeper level, is a belief that salvation is not entirely by grace through faith. There is still something left to do. The whole idea of purgatory is built on the assumption that something remains unfinished. And that assumption places it squarely in the category of human effort — which means it belongs in the same bucket as every other religion that is not biblical Christianity.

The Seriousness of the Question

This is not a matter to be treated lightly. Giving up candy for Lent, or giving up anything for forty days, may be a sincere gesture, but sincerity does not change the category. The question at the center of all of this is utterly serious: how can a sinful person be justified before a holy God? That is the dilemma every human being faces.

The Bible is clear that we come into this world separated from God because of our sin. The wages of sin is death — and that death carries with it not only physical death, but separation. My sin has separated me from God. Paul states this plainly in Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23, and he makes clear there are no exceptions. Every human being is in this condition.

Romans 3:10 puts it in the starkest possible terms: "There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good, no, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes."

That is Paul's blanket indictment against all of mankind. No one is excluded. The question, then, is not whether we are in this condition — Paul says we all are. The question is what can be done about it, and who can do it.

The Problem with Human Goodness

There is something in us that, when we read that, makes us say, "Wait a minute, that's not true." What about Nana? Nana was so good. Nana could bake. Nana was sweet. What the Bible says is that even the good things Nana did, she did them with a wrong heart. I always use Thanksgiving dinner as an illustration. All the ladies — and I don't mean to be offensive, but we're a long way away from Thanksgiving, so we can say it — will spend six, seven, eight hours preparing Thanksgiving dinner and will always say it's all for everybody, and then bemoan the fact that it's over in ten or fifteen minutes. I would suggest you didn't do it for everybody; you did it for yourself. If that were the case, you wouldn't care whether it took them five, ten, twenty minutes, or an hour.

The Bible shows us that our heart is just wicked. So this is a gigantic point: when I do anything to try to please God, all I do is present my sinful wickedness to Him. Anything I do to try to comply with the law, any effort, is not from a pure motive.

What the Law Actually Does

That is why Paul goes on in verse 19, still in Romans 3: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth will be closed, and all the world may become accountable, because the works of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight." The works of the law — in this case the law of Judaism, but also the law of man, the flesh — cannot save us. For all of us have sinned and are separated from God. But apart from the law, verse 21 tells us, the righteousness of God is manifest.

So we come back to this very basic question: what must I do to be saved? How does a holy God accept a sinful man? How does a sinful man do anything that is good before a holy God? The wage of sin is death. The bad news is that our sin and its effect is that we are dead in our sins and trespasses, separated from God, helpless, with nothing we can do. But we are not hopeless, because Christ died so that we might have eternal life.

Justified by Faith Alone

I want to go back to Galatians, and we are going to stay in verse 16 for a while. Galatians chapter 2, verse 16: "Know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but through faith." If we believed in Christ, we will be justified by faith, but not by works of the law. The word "justified" is really an important term — central, really, to understanding the gospel. It is a legal term, used in a court of law. It means to be innocent or acquitted, cleared of all charges, declared righteous. It is the opposite of condemned or guilty.

What Paul is saying here is that we are acquitted and innocent, forgiven, pardoned — not based on anything that we do, but based completely on what Christ did. The emphasis on this cannot be too great. J. I. Packer writes, "The doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas; it bears a world on its shoulders — the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. When Protestants let the thought of justification drop out of their minds, the true knowledge of salvation drops with it, and cannot be restored until the truth of justification is in its proper place." Luther claims, "If the doctrine of justification is lost, the whole of Christianity is lost."

Two Approaches to Standing Before God

So there it is in verse 16 — his whole point, and it is really simple. There are two approaches to justification, two approaches by which man claims to be able to be just before God. One is through human efforts, called here the works of the law. The other is through faith — faith in Christ, that Christ died for our sin.

Martin Luther writes, "The true meaning of Christianity is this: that a man first acknowledges through the law that he is a sinner, for whom it is impossible to perform any good works. If you want to be saved, your salvation doesn't come by works, but God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through Him. He was crucified and died for you and bore your sins in His body once and for all." What does it mean to have faith in Christ? It means to believe Jesus is who He said He was, and that you are who He says you are. This is the solution to the problem that has plagued man from the beginning of creation, and it has not changed since the beginning of time.

A Note Found in the Chapel

I was going about my morning when Tim Monn walked through and said he had been over in the chapel and found a note lying there. It was a journal, and the date on it is November 23rd, 2009. My hope is that we have cleaned this room since 2009, so my suspicion is that somebody had it in their Bible and it fell out. I want to read it to you and then come at this from a couple of different angles.

It is a journal entry. "Went to church last night, EVBC. It was good." Listen now — this is like the person sitting down the aisle from you, or maybe it is you. "Hope it fills what's missing in our life. Not sure where to turn. Feeling sad and empty. Help me, Lord. Bless my family. I want to run away, but not sure where. I feel sick and overwhelmed. I can't quit crying. I can't concentrate." This next part may be the saddest of all: "I don't care anymore, so I move beyond angry. Too much for me to handle."

The Futility of the Road of Good Works

I want to talk about that note from the perspective of mankind in general, because I don't know the spiritual condition of the person who wrote it. What I do know is that as someone who doesn't know Christ, I can easily move to that place — especially if I am a religious person — because I begin to see how futile it all is. I do good thing after good thing after good thing. Haven't some of you done that? Haven't you tried that road? I'll be good, I'll go to church, I'll work for Habitat for Humanity, I'll feed —

The Emptiness That Achievements Cannot Fill

The more you do, the more you find that those things bring no satisfaction. That is the whole book of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon says, "I'll try this, I'll try that, I'll try booze, I'll try achievement." You could try it through athletics, you could try it through money, or you could say, "If I get that girl I'll be happy, or that guy, or that scholarship, I'll be fulfilled." These are cries for help, evidence of an empty life — sad, wanting to run away, sick and overwhelmed.

Maybe you are here this morning and this represents your heart. It may be that you need Jesus. It may be that what is wrong is that sin has separated you from God, and what you are feeling in that moment is isolation from Him. We talk at Christmas about God and sinner reconciled, and the book of Romans is telling us that while we were enemies of God, while we were sinners, while we were at war with God — that reconciliation happened.

Consider what that word "reconcile" actually means. If I say to you, "Bob and I have been reconciled," and that is the only sentence you have — all you know about me, all you know about him — you immediately understand that there had to be some pre-existing hostilities. That is the evidence of sin.

Working Without Rest

Perhaps you have gone from church to church, or from religion to religion. Perhaps you have been here a long time and you have worked in student ministries and children's ministries, working and working and working — and you are simply worn out. What does Jesus say? "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." That exhaustion is not from ordinary work; it is from trying to work out your own salvation.

If that is you, or if you are not quite sure what was said, when the service is over, men and women will be at the front of the church in the conference center and the chapel. Come and meet with them. You need Him.

When God Feels Far Away

Here is what I am afraid some of us miss: what has been described could just as easily be written by a follower of Christ. Just because I know Jesus does not mean my life is smooth and easy.

I know Bill Berger, and he alluded to a study — he comes to one of the studies I lead on Thursday mornings — and when you hear the stories of what God is doing in his life, it is amazing. Some of you have had seasons like that, perhaps when God first saved you and everything felt alive. I remember a friend of mine who came down, someone I had known since grade school, and we were over at Southern and Alma Road heading into Mimi's for breakfast. He got out of the car and said, "Look at that sunrise." I said, "It is like that every day." I remembered driving into Flagstaff at night, waking up the next morning near the south end of town, and seeing the San Francisco Peaks for the first time — I was stunned. The sunsets here are extraordinary, but pretty soon you just reach for your sunglasses.

That is what can happen with faith. You came to Christ and it was as vivid and alive for you as it was for Bill Berger, and God was doing remarkable things. But maybe over time you drifted. Maybe the disciplines slipped. There was a season when He felt so close you could almost feel Him, and now He feels so far away you wonder if He even cares.

So this could be you — not sure what to do, feeling sad and empty, wanting to run away. Have you ever felt that way? Just wanting to run, not even knowing where. Overwhelmed, wanting to quit.

The Hound of Heaven

Here is the thing: He is the hound of heaven. He will not let you run. You can run from Him, but you cannot hide. The same Jesus you needed for salvation is the same Jesus you need to get through today. He is the same Jesus you need for your next breath.

Crucified and United with Christ

That is what Paul is saying. Go down to verse 20: "I have been crucified with Christ." He is identified with Christ. He used to be united with the law, and now he is united with Christ. In fact, it is not even Paul who lives — it is Christ who lives in him. It is Christ who does all of this work in him. It is the fruit of the Spirit — we will see that later in this book — the things that the Spirit produces. He is the vine; we are the branches. He is the one who produces this fruit.

I have said it a thousand times: anything you see in my life that is bad, that is me. Everything you see that is good is Christ working in me. That is what He does. "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God." That is what gets us through today.

Loved and Proven

Here is something worth hearing closely: "Him who loved me." How do we know He loves us? He gave His life for us.

Love is a magnificent thing that all of us crave, though we experience it at different levels. I have talked to people who have never experienced love and never felt it. Some people feel very loved. And we go looking for love — we look for it in all kinds of places and all kinds of things. Typically, in the course of that search, we look to human relationships. And even in human relationships, no matter how much we genuinely love someone and how committed we are to them, we will still disappoint them or hurt them, even as we declare that love.

God's Perfect and Unconditional Love

This is the mind-blowing reality: God loves you perfectly. He will never leave you, never forsake you, and never let you down. He knows exactly what you need and He will give it to you. He may not give it to you in your timetable, and He may not even give you the specific thing you asked for. But when you say, "I want this thing because it will result in this," He says, "No, I will give you this instead, and that will give you what you truly need — and it is better."

He is never going to say to you, "If I had known that about you, I would have never declared my love for you." While we were separated from God in a helpless state, at just the right time, Christ died so we would have everlasting life. And as the last part of verse 20 tells us, He gave Himself up for us.

Jesus says this in John 10:17–18: "I lay down my life that I may take it up again and no one has taken it away from me. I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again." Voluntarily, Jesus went to the cross. God was under no compulsion to save you, but out of His love, He did.

Chosen Before the Foundations of the World

Turn to the book of Ephesians. In a small group that meets three or four sessions through the year, we are studying the book of Ephesians and we just started the study this week, looking at the very beginning. Verse 3 tells us He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Verse 4 tells us He chose us in Him.

We just looked at the term "in Christ" — it appeared three or four times in Galatians 2:16. Here in Ephesians, it appears eight times in verses 3 through 13. He chose us in Him before the foundations of the world. He predestined us to adoption.

This led to a discussion on the doctrines of grace, predestination, election, and all the things that go with them. It was not a new discussion. It followed the same pattern as every discussion I have ever had with people who object to these truths. They say, "I don't know if that's true," or "If that's true, what about this?" — but they never deal with the central question of whether it is true, what God says, what the Bible teaches, and how you get around it.

What struck me — and maybe it is just where I am in my own life, or perhaps it is the study of Galatians — is that I do not think God gave us these truths so that we would get together, suddenly see them, and break down into fights and disputes with all our friends. One year, the entire pitching staff of a team doing spring training here came to our house on Sunday nights for a Bible study. It got into the doctrines of grace, and by the middle of May, the pitching staff decided they could not talk about it anymore because it had become so divisive.

I believe these things are true. God chose you before the foundations of the earth. I would be a fool to say otherwise, because that is what it says. I believe He adopted you and that you are predestined. But here is the point: I think He tells you these things so that we understand how deeply He really does love you.

The Freedom of a Love That Never Changes

He is telling you this: here was the condition you were in — helpless, hopeless, with no way out. But by His grace and His mercy, motivated by His love, He acted. If you know Christ as your Lord and Savior, He loves you with a very special, deep love, and that love will never change. That love will never increase or decrease based on your performance. Is that not an amazing truth?

There is great freedom in that, and it should not make you say, "Oh good, I can sin." It should make you want to love Him more. Think back to the first time you were with someone you were dating, and one of you had to say it first — and it is a scary thing to say, because you put it out there and they might respond with confusion or rejection. But so many of you were going to say, "I love you." And the minute you hear those words, something happens, because love generates love.

God says, "I love you, and I will prove it. I will send Jesus to die so that you will have eternal life." But it is not just about getting you to heaven. He says the life you now live, Christ lives in you. You are a new creature. All that past sin and failure, all those things you are embarrassed by, all those things where you think, "There is no way God could ever forgive this" — He addresses all of it.

There Is Nothing God Will Not Forgive

One of the saddest moments I have ever had in teaching came when I was speaking about forgiveness. A man came up afterward, just weeping. He was a drug user, and he had left some drugs in an old shag carpet. His young child — a baby, about two years old — had gotten into them, and the baby suffered serious harm as a result. When we were finished, he said, "There is no way God could ever forgive me for what happened."

I am here to tell you: that is exactly what God does — He forgives. All you have to do is come to Him. He is waiting to say, "You are forgiven." He is a God who loves you. And some of you might say, "I have never done anything like that." But you are just as lost. It does not take any more grace to save Jeffrey Dahmer than it does to save you. That is the condition. That is the whole reality of where we all stand before Him.

Your Greatest Need

To this I say: you may be a follower of Christ, and this may be you — there is something still missing, and you feel empty. I can tell you, the love that saved you is the love that will sustain you. It is not just Jesus to get to heaven. It is Jesus to get through the day.

It is not just Jesus to get into heaven — that is great — but it is the Jesus that sustains me. When I look at someone and say, I don't know if I can do it, I don't even know if I want to do this. Sometimes your heart is so broken and so heavy and so aching, and human relationships will do that to you. A spouse will blow out on you, a child will rebel against you, a friend will deny you, the job goes away. Life is filled with those disappointments, but the one place I will never be disappointed is in Jesus.

That is what He says: do not be afraid. Why? He will never leave you or forsake you. Many people will, and even the ones that stay, it is an imperfect love.

Four Points: A Summary of Justification

Let me give you four points here, because they are a perfect summary of what we have talked about.

Number one: your greatest need is justification — acceptance by God. The greatest need you have is to somehow, as a sinful person, be accepted by a holy God.

Number two: justification is not by works through the law, but by faith in Christ. You need redemption, and the only place you are going to find it is in Christ, not through your own effort. Martin Luther wrote, "I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me not what I ought to do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me — that He suffered and died and delivered me from sin and death."

Number three: to not trust in Christ is to become filled with self-trust, and to insult both the grace of God and the cross. When you say that you need to do something to be saved, what you are saying is, "Jesus, You did not accomplish what You said on the cross." When you say there is something you need to do — a law you need to adhere to, a way you need to obey — you are denying that you are saved by grace through faith.

This gets to the very essence of what Christ did on the cross. When Jesus said, "It is finished," what He meant was that all that needs to be done for the salvation of His people through all time has been accomplished on the cross. If you say there is something you need to do, then what you are saying is that on the cross, Jesus saved nobody — He only made salvation possible. That is a significant difference. Christ did not die to make salvation possible. Christ died to save His people from their sin.

United with Christ

Number four: to trust in Christ is to become united with Him. Because we are in Christ, we are more than justified. We have actually died and risen with Him, and the life we live is Him living in us.

I hope that is a message of encouragement — a reminder, for sure. It is simply the gospel. But that is all we really have to preach. As we said last week, Tim Keller said the gospel is not just the ABCs of Christianity — it is the A to Z of Christianity.

Paul's context is set against the Judaizers, and you may bring a similar inclination from a faith background or simply from human nature. Human nature will always say, "I will be justified before God by what I do." Biblical Christianity will always say, what you do is nothing but sin, and God will never accept that. He can only accept you when you have, as we saw in verse 16, faith in Christ.

Faith Is More Than Mental Assent

Faith is more than mental assent. If I were speaking with someone who said, "I believe Jesus Christ died for my sin, but I need to..." — no. It is not simply believing mentally that Jesus died for your sin. It is believing in a way that you are trusting in Him and Him alone.

It would be something like this. If I were to die and stand before God and He were to say, "Why should I let you, Tom, into heaven?" — well, I really should not be let in, because I have not done anything to deserve it. But here is what God said: that if I believe in Jesus and His death, I am in, because that is how I am justified. I am so united with Christ that when God looks at me, He sees Jesus. He does not even see my sin, because it has been washed away by what Christ accomplished on the cross.

As I said, this has been the story from the beginning of human history. Next week we will look at a great Old Testament example — the life of Abraham.

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*Father, we thank You for the gospel — the good news that Jesus accomplished what we could not accomplish for ourselves, that in the cross we find everything we need pertaining to salvation. God, I pray now that we would live lives that would bring honor and glory to You. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.*